Skver Kommunarov

We all know the small park at the corner of Lenin Avenue and st. Gogolevskaya, however, few people know that in the list of Tula cemeteries this place was listed as "Communards Cemetery" under No. 1 (reference book "All Tula and Tula Province". 1925). A strange place, if only because there have never been any capital buildings in the history of Tula. This is confirmed by the data of the company "Workshop restoration", which carried out geophysical research here in 2004-2010. By the way, they showed that not so long ago (150-200 years ago), on the site of the public garden there was a deep ravine (about 5 meters deep), later covered with soil and slag (the so-called "cultural layer"). The first burials took place in the spring of 1918, when, to the sounds of the "Internationale", the commissar of the food detachment F. Bundurin and the Latvian riflemen killed and dismembered by the peasants of the Novosilsky district during the surplus appropriation were buried. Until 1928, communards were buried here - people who devoted themselves to the revolution. It is from here that many Tula names originate - Kommunarov Street, the newspapers Kommunar, Molodoy Kommunar, etc. In 1924, memorial bas-reliefs by the sculptor T. Shchelkan (Rudenko) were installed at the entrance to the square, and a flowerbed in the form of a five-pointed star was erected, around which the communards were buried. Among the 52 buried were poet Max Smirnov, collectivization participant D. Bandikov, A. Zhabrov, military commissar G. Kasulaitis, V. Mikheev. In the 1990s, the bas-reliefs were lost. And only the lines of the revolutionary poet Liodor Palmin "Cry over the corpses of the fallen soldiers, don't defile their ashes with a tear, under the banner of the same ideas, go into battle to the end" on the newly erected walls at the entrance to the square remind us that they are buried here people. The monuments that adorned the cemetery are interesting. The first of them was a bust of Karl Marx, presented to the Tula by the Sverdlovsk workers (now stands in the Kremlin Garden). It stood here until the early 1950s. Then, around 1951, a sculpture of Stalin with a scroll in his hand is installed in the park. After 1960, Stalin was replaced by a stone bowl, and finally, in 1967, a friend was installed here under the banner of the same ideas, you go into battle to the end ”on the newly erected walls at the entrance to the square remind us that people are buried here. The monuments that adorned the cemetery are interesting. The first of them was a bust of Karl Marx, presented to the Tula by the Sverdlovsk workers (now stands in the Kremlin Garden). It stood here until the early 1950s. Then, around 1951, a sculpture of Stalin with a scroll in his hand is installed in the park. After 1960, Stalin was replaced by a stone bowl, and finally, in 1967, the familiar four-sided pylon was installed here (sculptors Z. Ryabchenko, V. Sakhnenko, architect B. Bratkova). At the same time, the scattered graves were united into a single mass grave. In the 1970s-1980s, the informal youth of Tula gathered in the park. This place received the unofficial name "De Gaulle". Here you could buy records of fashion groups, jeans, exchange music records. And in conclusion, a small detail: on October 29, 1968, a capsule with a letter from the youth of 1968 to their descendants was mounted in the base of the pylon in the center of the square, which must be opened exactly 50 years later - on October 29, 2018. It would be interesting to read it.